


I'd Just Die

by acacia59



Series: Anthem [2]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 22:09:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15034367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acacia59/pseuds/acacia59
Summary: Who else can take all your blood and your curses? Nobody I’ve seen you hanging around.





	I'd Just Die

**Author's Note:**

> Follow up to Here Comes My Man (finally). “Biloxi Parish,” “Desire” and “Handwritten” by The Gaslight Anthem.

_But until then I'll be with you through the dark_

_And until then I'll be with you through the dark_

_Who else can say that about you, baby?_

_Who else can say that about you, now?_

_Who else can take all your blood and your curses?_

_Nobody I've seen ya hanging around,_

_Seen ya hanging around_

 

I turn off the coupe and sits in the sudden silence with my hands clenched around the steering wheel to stop their trembling. When I was figuring out to get to this modest little house on the outskirts of this sleepy little village, I had been too distracted to think about what the ramification would be if I failed. Now they all tumble in on top of me, hard and unyielding, thoughts of dying alone with the one I love just seventy-nine miles away, not loving me back. It is enough to make all the muscles in my body go limp and I let my head fall against the steering wheel with a teeth-rattling thump.

I long to turn the car back on, rev its V-8 engine until the neighbors come spilling out onto their porches and then let the car go, let it bury itself in the front room of the house. But there is no telling if John is even home to witness my histrionics and so I force myself to go on quietly breathing with my eyes closed and the stitching on the wheel leaving indentations in my forehead. And besides, John isn’t one for dramatics, not one to be swayed once he’s made up his mind by loud declarations or violent gestures of reformation. Good old dependable Deaky. As steady and constant as the stars in their courses.

Well, hopefully not this fucking time.

I raise my head and catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. I pull off my sunglasses and look at myself critically. I can see the wrinkles beginning to gather in the corners of my eyes, wrinkles that were never there before. We are second generation rock stars and so we get the dubious benefit of seeing what is happening to those who are five, ten years ahead of us. I think of all the ones who have fallen to this strange life and think it is almost a mercy. At least they don’t have to go on, forever caught in a pantomime of youthful rebellion when they have become the establishment and they are no longer young. My eyes look tired.

My hand goes to my hair and brushes against the gear stick on the way. I nearly turn the car back on again and decide to put this off another week. My mouth works and my brow knits as I fight the cowardly desire to flee. Dying alone isn’t so bad, is it? Compared to that _look_ that John is capable of giving someone he distains. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the front curtain of the little house twitch and it breaks through the panic in my chest and makes me set my jaw. Today is the day to settle this. Next week I might have lost my chance forever.

***

_I've been down at Biloxi Parish,_

_And that's good enough for me,_

_I found that nothing truly matters,_

_That you cannot find for free_

 

I stop dead in the doorway of the bedroom of the house that has somehow slipped from ‘mine’ into being ‘ours’ without me ever giving it express permission. I am certain I have never said it could go and do that. The scene that greets me is immediate and obvious. It doesn’t take great deductive reasoning skills to add up the loose pile of clothes, the suitcase and the grim expression on the face of the man that I am just beginning to love coming home to.

Never mind that three nights out of ten that thought fills me with so much terror that I don’t come home at all.

John is wearing that leaving look, a look that I am surprised I recognize because I’ve only ever seen it reflected back at me in dark, tear-mirrored eyes. I have made it a habit to be on only one side of the door swinging closed like a guillotine. “What are you doing?” I ask, but I don’t need an answer, not really, not with every possible answer laid out in John’s neat folds on our bed.

“I’m done with this, Roger. I can’t be your secret anymore, the thing you come home to when you are tired of pretending to be something you’re not.”

John never says anything casually. His words are always filled with such intensity that it belies the bluntness of them, the stillness of his expression. These words strike me to my core. They make me feel like a cornered animal. Desperate.

I say the thing that has always worked in the past. The thing that has always sutured the cuts in our battered relationship, even as it has added layer after layer of scar tissue, hard and gnarled between us. “I just need a little more time.”

John stands up so quickly that I can’t help but flinch away from him. John is quiet and John is watchful and John is never, ever a violent man, but there is a tension coiled up inside of him that makes me wonder sometimes. And inside of me is that awful curiosity that makes one pick up a stick and poke at a hissing snake. What a match we make.

 “Do you think I didn’t know about all your pretty girlfriends, Roger?” John’s mouth twists as he speaks and I can feel the ground falling away from me. I want to deflect him, derail him, but John isn’t Brian, open to wheedling and bargaining. “I waited for you! Gave you time to decide!” he spits, the hard and the bright in his anger finally coming through.

Then John stops and I am thrown off balance, realizing that I have just been gifted with the chance to plead my case. I wonder yet again about the exact depth of John’s feelings for me. I think of the promises that would make John stay and the words die like dust in my mouth. I can’t honestly make those promises and John would never believe my lies.

“You can’t fucking decide, can you?” John says with a snort and I shrink back from the venom in those words. “Well, I’ve gone and decided for both of us.”

I can’t help the tears that spring to my eyes, but I can keep them from spilling over. I tell myself that this doesn’t hurt, that I never wanted this, that I can be happy now without the terrible strain of having a man in my bed. A man that I want more than anything in the world but can’t even bear to have a stranger see him brush a lock of hair from my face.

John looks away, picks up his suitcase and brushes past me without a word. I collapse onto the bed as I watch him go, a part of me breaking. No, not just any man. My man. The words are bitter and they hurt. I pick up a shirt John has left behind and scream long and hard into the soft and dangerously scented fabric.

***

_Pull it out, turn it up, what's your favorite song?_

_That's mine, I've been crying to it since I was young_

_I know there's someone out there feeling just how I feel_

_I know they're waiting up, I know they're waiting to heal_

_And I've been holding my breath,_

_Are you holding your breath, for too many years to count?_

 

There were four kinds of women who slept with rock stars. Believe me, I’ve made something of a study of it. The first kind you might expect—a fan, who is beside herself with having met her crush and willing to do whatever you what. The raw excitement can be charming, it can be wearying too, mind, but there is something deeply flattering about knowing and seeing that you can have that effect on people. She will be unsure of herself and a bit too eager to please, anything goes…as long as you take the lead. There may be a fair bit of giggling involved.

Of course slightly related but distinct are what I like to call the classic groupies. These women are just deeply interested in music, in bands. They may have their favorites, but really, they just want to be a part of it all and be in the scene. They aren’t even particularly into for sex. They are just as happy doing your laundry or accompanying you to a late night dinner. They stick around, they are the ones you get to know better than your own family.

Then there are the ones that make me a bit uncomfortable. Let’s call them the collectors, the huntresses. They are after one thing and one thing only, to bag as many famous men as possible. They are slick, they are skilled and they are frighteningly competent. Enough of that.

And then there are the women who don’t fit, who you aren’t sure how to classify. Maybe it is this confusion that makes your mind linger on them a bit longer that the others, maybe not. These are the women we end up marrying. If you’re Brian, you think that having someone waiting for you at home will make you a bit more normal, will keep this life from screwing with your head quite so badly. And if you are me, you give it a go because sheer quantity hasn’t quenched that thirst deep inside of you, so maybe quality will. And then you find out that underneath all the types, women are just people and two people grow apart if they never talk or see each other or share anything and so that experiment worked out bloody well, didn’t it?

I crush out the cigarette and watch the last gasp of smoke curl away into the dimly lit pub. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the woman who has been watching me all night from across the bar shift in her seat, like a cat tensing for a big leap. She is a star fucker, pure and simple, but one who hasn’t had too many stars fall into her lap, not like tonight when I stumbled into this shitty little pub off the M4. That gives her a certain amount of winsome innocence, star-struck and dazzled.

I pull my sunglasses out of my hair and put on my best roguish grin as she finally gathers enough courage to slip off her stool and make her way across to my side of the bar. I think about the woman carrying my child and pointedly don’t think about anyone else, especially grey-eyed bassists with storms in the creases of their brow and velvet in the pads of their fingertips.

I don’t remember the pleasantries we exchange, the lines that I lob her and she returns back to me, as restrained as a friendly match between rivals, feeling out the opponent’s defenses with no stakes on the line. She buys me a drink with a laugh and the bartender says it’s on the house. I slip him a fifty and suddenly the whole charade has me tired and jaded. I throw back the drink with the goal of chasing off those kinds of thoughts and suggest that maybe we should go back to hers. Because the last way I want to spend tomorrow morning is by giving an awkward tour of my mansion to a star-struck one-night stand. I have learned that lesson.

As we leave, I slip. Perhaps it is the alcohol, perhaps it is too much introspection. I slip and remember when I was drinking at a bar with Freddie and John and for the first time I had seen John pick up a young man and slink off with him in this exact fucking same way. My jaw had nearly dropped to the floor and Freddie had laughed at me, jostling me with his elbow. “What?” he had said with a smirk. “You had never suspected our innocent little Deaky? You better watch out, Rog, that man is ten times the predator that I am _and_ he has a taste for blondes.”

At the time, I hadn’t understood the shudder that ran through me at Freddie’s words, part thrill and part terror. But I understand it now and as I mechanically take the glass of 5 quid wine from the woman and kiss her neck. I despair of ever feeling that way again. Then I set my jaw, throw out those old memories and concentrate on her soft and feminine scent. This is here and now and this is all that matters.

So there are four types of women that sleep with rock stars and not a single one is going to give you any sort of meaning in life. So screw meaning anyway and screw those women. If the universe has seen fit to give me cheap thrills in abundance and a paucity of authentic meaning and enlightenment, who can fault me for making the best of what I have?

***

_What does it feel like inside?_

_Does it hurt you at night?_

_Or does it keep you alive, and set you on fire, on fire?_

_I would give anything for the touch of your skin_

_Yes, I would burn here for years_

_Up in desire, desire!_

 

What do our deepest, darkest fantasies say about ourselves? I know that you have them, we all do, the things we won’t tell our closest soulmate, the things that push us over the edge when we are alone and sick to death of wanking but still somehow needing that orgasm-induced centering. That image or story that flashes into your head when you aren’t quite getting there, that one thing that you are ashamed to admit always, without fail, will have you shaking and coming in ragged spurts over your own hand as soon as it crosses your mind.

For me, that thing has been men. Strong men, dominant and faceless men who could hold me down, helpless and trembling, and have their way with me. It hadn’t always been this, but it has been ever since I was cleaning out the stall at Kensington and found a titty mag that turned out to not be about titties at all. One look sent me straight to the loo, curled over my fist in the stall and barely able to make it through a couple quick pumps.

I never thought those fantasies made me queer. They were just that— _fantasies_ —and had nothing to do with my actually sex life. Think of all the women I had had—and enjoyed, dammit. That is, I never thought that until the faceless men stopped being faceless and narrowed down to just one man, an unobtrusive bass player whose eyes, nonetheless, hinted of such sinfully pleasurable things over the top of my cymbal. Then it wasn’t quite so abstract and then it was not so secret and then I was lost, adrift on a sea of desire and ignominy with no idea how to make my way back to solid ground.

In the months after John walked out the door of my bedroom without looking back, all I feel is a numb sort of relief. It is like when you have been staring at something so hard that when you finally look away, you can’t see anything at all.

So perhaps I can be excused when I finally came out of my fog to find my band falling apart in tatters around me and my life following not far behind.

“I’m pregnant,” Debbie says and there is something hard in her voice that catches my attention.

“Can’t you…?”

“I’m keeping it,” she interrupts and sets her jaw in a way that probably attracted me to her in the first place. I think of the two little children that grow in stuttering leaps and spurts in between my infrequent visits.

“I don’t know if I can…”

“I know, Roger. I want to be a mother. I was never so vain to expect you to be a husband.” I close my eyes against the next words. “Or a father.”

***

_And some men spend their lives_

_Chasing the accolades of pride_

_But that just never crossed my mind,_

_You were always on my mind_

 

The album is deep into the final edits, which of course means that Freddie and Brian are nearly coming to blows over the exact reason that we needed to scrap everything and start over. I am sitting in the control booth, trying to see how many times I can play exactly the first seven seconds of Invisible Man before it snaps them out of their argument and they turn their ire on me.

John is across the studio taking apart a guitar pedal for no discernable purpose, studiously ignoring Freddie’s appeals for backup. Since he packed up his things and never looked back, we orbit each other carefully, and neither one admits to keeping Freddie or Brian between us at all time. Sometimes, I try to catch his eye, for no reason other than to make it hurt a little more, but his eyes slide away like rain off oiled canvas.

Abruptly, he stands up. His sudden movement catches Freddie’s attention and the frontman’s mouth snaps shut mid-retort. The two men stare at each other for a long moment and whatever passes between them is outside the range of my understanding. Brian watches them, looking as baffled as I feel. Then Freddie nods, quick and terse. John closes his eyes and then opens them, ducking his head as he walks past Freddie, walks past Brian, walks past me and out the door.

I stop the track and follow him, Freddie’s liquid brown eyes on my back. I pause as the bright sunlight in the car park hits my face. John doesn’t. “Where are you going?” I call after the sight of his retreating back. I am getting so goddamn sick of that sight.

“I am leaving.”

I make a play for levity. “Yeah, it’s not like we are accomplishing anything at all today. Pretty sure we’re going to miss that Christmas market everyone has been harping about.”

“No. I am leaving.” Something in John’s voice makes me feel almost dizzy with vertigo. In his quiet tenor there is the terror of a dream about falling and the shock of a missed step. I fight back the panic rising inside of me and wonder why I care so much.

“What? Don’t be ridiculous. We can make this work…” This finally stops him. He spins on the spot and we are suddenly too close, he is looking at me too intently.

“You don’t get it, do you, Roger? Freddie is sick and Freddie is _dying_. It could have been George Michael, it could have been Elton John, it could have been _me_ , but it wasn’t, it was _Freddie_.”

“John…”

“I dodged a bullet, Roger, can you understand that? I dodged a bullet and it hit my friend. How can I stay here after that?”

“What about the album?” John cuts his eyes at me, as if I have completely missed the point.

“This isn’t about the fucking album, Roger.”

“What about Freddie?”

John pauses and stands stock still, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “I have said my goodbyes to Freddie. He understands.”

“What if I don’t understand?”

John flicks his eyes to meet mine for the barest fraction of a second. I hold my breath, seeing something there, some imaginary ghost of regret. Then they are gone again, gazing off into the middle distance somewhere over my head.

“This isn’t about fucking you either.”

***

_I've been fondling with your heart strings,_

_And that's good enough for me,_

_And if I break over your house,_

_Then I know I must been working_

 

_Try it on for size, my darling,_

_See what man you can make of me,_

_I will eventually haunt you,_

_And you'll eventually be my queen_

  
  
_And I'll be with you through_

_The dark so that you do not_

_Go through the dark alone,_

_On your own_

 

Homophobia is a funny thing. Not, perhaps, haha funny, but funny none the less. I used to watch the queens late at night on the dark street corners, in the shadowed back rooms of certain clubs with all the wide-eyed fascination of a kid at the freak show. They seemed miles away from hurled insults in the boys’ dormitories, mysterious, forbidden. That was until I met Freddie.

Freddie was different. Freddie was always just Freddie and by some strange force of personality made you accept unblinkingly whatever he wanted to do. Oh, you want to dress us up in leotards and costumes with wings, yeah, sure that sounds grand. You want to roll across a line of spotted dancers? Seems pretty cool to me, probably be a big hit with the British public, to say nothing of America. I teased him about his crushes, brought alcohol and got roaring drunk with him over his heartbreaks and never thought twice that it was men we were doing it all over.

And so, when I think about John, I can’t…I—I just…ah, dear God above help me, how can I be so afraid?

There is nothing on this planet that should be able to stop me from being with him. But somehow, I have stopped myself.

I think of his hands, his eyes, the flat of his stomach as it angles down to his groin, light hair dusting his white skin. I think of his lips on mine, the shudder of his breath being drawn in as he pushes deeper inside of me. I think of his heat, hard and sheathed in velvet. I think of these things, these parts in sequence, methodically testing which disgusts me enough to ruin my own life over.

I come up empty and shaking, shaking and coming, sobbing over his memory and his stained tee shirt. _Fuck this_ , I think and dress, go out, and get drunk.

***

_And we waited for sirens that never come_

_And we only write by the moon, every word handwritten_

_And to ease the loss of youth and the many, many years I missed you_

_Pages plead forgiveness, every word handwritten_

 

The clatter and lights of the bistro shudder and dance in my head like a bucket of bouncing balls dropped from a balcony. I am fighting off a hangover and each day I wake up to it with more and more dread, never easier, never hard enough to stop me when night falls.

Brian is across from me, methodically pushing half a tomato around his plate. He has fallen off the vegetarian wagon again, stress lowering his self-control as always. Ironic as it was lack of self-control that gave him the stress in the first place.

He has been agonizing over the finer points of the morality of adultery versus divorce for nearly an hour now and I have been agonizing over trying to not throw up. Last night I went and visited Freddie and the difference over a couple of months was shocking. I am losing my patience.

I pull the plate away from Brian and hand it to a passing waitress. Brian tosses his head up like a nervous horse. I am feeling cruel and Brian is always so easy to take it out on.

“Freddie is dying and you are mooning over some twit of an actress? God, Brian, leave Chrissie or not. But haven’t you cheated on her enough that leaving her is the first honest thing you’ve done?”

Brian looks miserable, twisting a napkin tighter and tighter between his long fingers. “I still love her, I just love Anita too. Why do I have to be the unlucky one? All those women you’ve had and never fallen in love with any of them. That could have been me instead.”

I sit bolt upright as a realization struck me.

“John was wrong.”

Confusion creases Brian’s forehead. “Wh—what?”

I lean forward, thinking through the implications and feeling more certain with each passing second. “Nothing. Everything. Thank you, Brian, you truly are some kind of genius. I’ve got to go.”

I put a tenner on the table, knowing Brian never carries cash and leave the café trying not to run. For once, I know where I am going.

***

_Let it out, let me in, take ahold of my hand_

_There's nothing like another soul that's been cut up the same_

_And did you wanna drive without a word in between?_

_I can understand, you need a minute to breathe_

 

_And to sew up the seams..._

 

_…after all this defeat_

 

John is in the doorway by the time I have made it up the walk, his arms crossed and tight across his chest.

“How did you find me?”

“As it turns out, the locals like to talk about the resident celebrity. Particularly when another celebrity is doing the asking.”

“I don’t have anything to say to you, Roger.”

“I know. I thought that maybe I could say something to you and you could just listen.”

“Look. I know how you think this is going to go. That you can just show up here after all these years and give me some sketched out apology and I will fall right into your arms. Well, bad news, it isn’t going to work like that.”

I think about how John can be so cold. I wonder at the emotions that I have always assumed moved under John’s icy visage. Maybe I am wrong. John is staring at me and for a moment I think I see something melt in the other man’s expression but then the shadow expression passes and is replaced by only a deepening frown.

John pulls away and starts to close the door. “Wait!” I cry out. John flinches but does not pause in his inexorable leaving. “Wait,” I call again. “I thought that I dodged a bullet.” The door closes in my face with a quiet click.

I stare at the blank door, knowing that this is it, that all my work to find the reclusive bassist has been for naught. I have failed. I am not used to failure.

Just as I am about to turn and go see if there is a back door that is unlocked, the door clicks again and I feel my heart leap up into my throat. The door opens more cautiously this time and when it finally swings aside to reveal John, his face is broken open and all the emotion I could have ever wanted to see is there. Fear wars with desperation over its place next to despair. “What did you say?” John whispers.

“I thought that I dodged a bullet that hit my friend,” I say plainly. I see John’s flinch in shoulder and in jaw. “I saw how Brian confused lust for love, how a one night stand fueled by alcohol and frustrated horniness could convince him to throw everything away, to fall deeply in love…for a few weeks at least. I was smarter than that. I never let love get in the way.

“I’ve lost count of the number of women I’ve fucked, John. And you know what the most screwed up part of that is? I was _proud_ of that. I was _proud_ that I had had so many women and never, not once, fallen in love with one of them.

“And then you came along. You came along with your aloofness and your eyes, always watching me, always _pushing_ me to do…what? I couldn’t figure it out back then and it was driving me crazy. We both thought it was because you were asking me to be queer and I couldn’t…I couldn’t go against everything that I had always thought that I was.

“But that didn’t make any sense, did it? I watched Freddie with his boyfriends and it never bothered me and it should have, right? If seeing it in myself hurt me so? And what did it matter what anyone thought? I was in a band called _Queen_ for fuck’s sake!

“It took you leaving me. It took you leaving Queen. It took Brian leaving his wife and child. For me to realize that I loved you all along. Love you still. That loving you was what had me terrified. I must be fucking _thick_.

“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot. And I think that I don’t have to be Brian. I don’t have to avoid love to avoid making the mistakes that he’s made.” I pause. I can feel the tears starting to prick the outside corners of my eyes. “And you don’t have to be Freddie. You can’t pay penance for him. You can’t be held responsible for anyone’s sins but your own.”

“But I…”

“Someone or something out there has offered you a measure of grace. What good does it do Fred to throw that away with both hands?”

A shudder runs through John and for a second I think he is about to bolt.

“I’m still scared, you know,” I say softly. “I don’t think that I can be…can change all at once. But I think it will be easier with you than without you.”

John almost reaches for me, then stops himself. “I—I, I just need some…”

“…time?” I finish for him with a quirk of my eyebrow.

John’s mouth snaps closed and then, to my surprise, he breaks out in laughter, sharp and desperate, sure, but laughter still.

“Yeah, time. Why the fuck not? Let’s have some time together.”

***

_And the band all quiets down_

_And it's just you and me in the dark_

_I won't say nothing_

_‘Cuz that's how I know your heart_

_I won't say nothing_

_‘Cuz that's how I know your heart_

  
_Who else can say that about you, baby?_

_Who else can say that about you, now?_

_Who else can take all your blood and your curses?_

_Nobody I've seen a hanging around_

_Seen a-hanging around_

 

John moves slow and it is unbearably sweet, unbearably intense, unbearably monumental. That unbearableness is always what scared me before, left me shaking and ready to run. But now I think of all the times that I wasn’t shaken to the core. I didn’t run, no, but I sure as hell walked away.

His hand moves up my thigh and I know, suddenly, what this is worth. How it is that Brian and Freddie have been chasing this for so long, in spite of everything. I wonder how I ever could have thrown it away.

It hurts, I decide. It hurts to put my fate in someone else’s hands. It hurts to know what pleasure this buys, when it could be taken away from me at a whim. I wonder why anyone would go through it.

I wonder at the fact that suddenly I know why. John takes me, inch by inch splaying open my soul even more. Now I know that if it was something that I could stand to throw away, then it wouldn’t be worth a damn.

_What does it feel like inside?_

_Does it hurt you at night?_

_Or does it keep you alive and set you on fire, on fire?_

_I would give anything for the touch of your skin_

_Yes, I would burn here for years_

_Up in desire, desire_


End file.
